Elain Szu

Seed/Pre-seed investing from personal + Accel Starter Fund 14. I invest in teams where the customer (B- or C-) need is already critical and there are inklings of product-market fit. Deep-thinking, analytical and exponential growth-mindset founders. Especially interested in solutions that aim to quantify behavioral disciplines (productivity, customer dev, product dev, talent, marketing, communities, ERP) and inherently create virtuous cycles for defensibility.

Narvar is the leading post-purchase customer engagement platform for Commerce retailers and brands. As the head of Marketing for a 300+ person growth-stage startup, I led and created a global team across Product Marketing, Comms, Demand Gen/Field, Content, and Talent Brand as part of the Executive team. As a part of the Executive team, I built cohesion and alignment with core functions including Revenue teams, Product, People and Finance to drive 42% revenue growth and a Marketing contribution of 19% with 2.1x ROI on spend. Highlights: Led first data-driven thought leadership report, new brand positioning, delivered highest ROI customer conference, launched Narvar Concierge, launched Narvar Customer Certification program, partnership with Walgreens-Boots Alliance and Nordstrom's, pricing & packaging revamp, lead scoring framework, bi-coastal Exec Customer Advisory Board, 55+ hits in Tier 1 global news media, recruiting rebrand, hiring for 4+ exec team members.

MoPub is the leading monetization platform for mobile apps and runs the world's largest mobile ads exchange, MoPub Marketplace. Built and led MoPub Marketing as the 2nd business hire through successful all-equity acquisition by Twitter pre-IPO in 2013. https://medium.com/on-startups/e3ffbf8f3cd8 Highlights: Established category and MoPub as the world's leading mobile monetization platform. Led marketing strategy, product positioning, launches and growth campaigns, corp comms including AR/PR, acquisition announcement, field and content marketing prior to acquisition. Doubled as a Product Mgmt leader in second year. Second business hire, 9th employee.

Driving user engagement and converting event attendees to organizers through online product and email during my MBA. First 50 employees.